The father of Jacinta and Francisco noticed that when the third apparition began, a small grayish cloud hovered over the holm oak, the sunlight diminished, and a cool breeze blew over the mountain range, despite it being the height of summer.
On this day the following words were exchanged between Lucia and Our Lady:
Lucia: What does Your Grace wish of me?
Our Lady: I want you to come here on the thirteenth day of next month and to continue to pray the Rosary every day in honour of Our Lady of the Rosary, in order to obtain peace for the world and an end to the war, for she alone can be of any avail.
Lucia: I would like to ask you to tell us who you are and to perform a miracle so everyone will believe that Your Grace appears to us.
Our Lady: Continue to come here every month. In October, I will tell you who I am and what I want, and I will perform a miracle that everyone will see so as to believe.
(Lucia then made a number of requests for conversions, cures, and other graces. Our Lady recommended the constant recitation of the rosary in order to obtain those graces during the year.)
Then Our Lady continued: “Sacrifice yourselves for sinners and say many times, especially when you make a sacrifice, ‘O Jesus, this is for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.’”
It was at this point that Our Lady revealed a message – the prophetic Message of Fatima. It contains three distinct parts. The first part is a terrible vision of hell. The second part is a prophetic warning of the rise of Communist Russia, the spreading of Russia’s “errors” throughout the world, and how Russia would become a source of wars, revolutions, and persecutions of the Church. The third part is a vision of great destruction in the world and of martyrdoms of both clergy and lay people, followed by conversion.
After telling the children the Secret, Our Lady asked them not to divulge it: “Do not tell anybody about this”. The time for telling would come later.
Because Our Lady requested them to keep the Message to undisclosed it came to be known as the Secret of Fatima.
